Monday, January 21, 2013

West Point Study Warns of Christian Terrorists

A report from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point titled "Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right" is intended to indoctrinate cadets to believe that Christians, conservatives and anyone not "future oriented" (a.k.a. liberal) are potential terrorists because they desire "to restore or preserve values and practices that are part of the idealized historical heritage of the nation or ethnic community."

". . . they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government."-- Arie Perliger, Director of Terrorism Studies, West Point

“This report is outrageous in and of itself,” said a Washington Times reader, one of more than 1,600 to post a comment. “But it speaks of a far worse scenario at the hallowed West Point; the rise of liberalism within the faculty there and their desire to shape the next generation of warrior/patriots into left-of-center thinkers. Sad and troubling. Our country is in trouble on so many fronts now.”

The report states that there were 350 acts of violence against people or property by the “far right” in 2011. It does not break down the attacks to show who the victims/perpetrators were.

[The report] lumps limited government activists with three movements it identifies as “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement.”

The report also draws a link between the mainstream conservative movement and the violent “far right,” and describes liberals as “future oriented” and conservatives as living in the past.

The report adds: “While far-right groups’ ideology is designed to exclude minorities and foreigners, the liberal-democratic system is designed to emphasize civil rights, minority rights and the balance of power.”

A Republican congressional staffer who served in the military told The Washington Times: “If [the Defense Department] is looking for places to cut spending, this junk study is ground zero.

This is not the first time elements of the federal government have tried to smear conservatives with sloppy work and a broadbrush analysis.

In 2009, liberals in the Department of Homeland Security prepared a . . . report [that] bore the ominous title: “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” . . . After much public ridicule, the DHS report vanished from public view . . .

No one doubts the existence of racist and hate-filled groups that require monitoring. But both the DHS and West Point reports read as if they were laying the groundwork for a rhetorical attack on mainstream conservatism of the sort that President Clinton launched in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, when he blamed talk radio for stirring up anti-government passions. No one should be surprised if supporters of new gun-control measures begin justifying them by referring to the West Point report.

“The anti-abortionists have been extremely productive during the last two decades, amassing 227 attacks, many of them perpetrated without the responsible perpetrators identified or caught,” Perliger wrote. “And while, in both cases, the 1990s were more violent than the last decade, in the case of anti-abortion, the trend is much more extreme, as 90 percent of attacks were perpetrated before 2001.”

Another suspect group in Perliger’s study are people who support the sovereignty of the United States. And he concludes the anti-government movement is a recent phenomenon.

“The anti-federalist rationale is multifaceted, and includes the beliefs that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a New World Order in which the United States will be absorbed into the United Nations or another version of global government,” Perliger wrote.

Perliger turned his attention to Christian fundamentalism and asserts a connection between all three of his sub-groups.

“Unlike the movements discussed previously, the fundamentalist movement’s militant and violent nature was relatively late to develop. For many years the… fundamentalist movement did not produce violent sub-groups, but rather functioned as a source of intellectual inspiration and a moral justification for the violent activities and operations of ideologically related movements,” Perliger wrote.

“Hence, it is not surprising that many of the prominent ideologues of the white supremacist and anti-federalist movements intensively cooperated with – and at times saw themselves as part of – the fundamentalist movement. This dynamic allowed the penetration of non-identity ideas into the movement, and in many ways facilitated the narrowing of the gaps between the fundamentalist movement and other streams of the American far right,” Perliger wrote.

Former Army intelligence officer and NATO intelligence specialist Tim Tooman says the juxtaposition of all three groups in one paragraph is intentional and notes the frequent use of the words for Christianity.

“Christian and derivatives [are] used 75 times in the document, although often carefully qualified as in Christian Identity Group. Perliger’s writing is OK, but could be misinterpreted by the quick reader,” Tooman said.